


La couleur des jours heureux

by tomato_greens



Series: Erik Lehnsherr's Princess Diary [2]
Category: Princess Diaries - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, it was less overwhelming joy at having found a home and family or hope for a mutant utopia that decided Erik but rather the dangerous combination of his own nagging sense of purposelessness and Charles Xavier’s smile.</p><p>//Or, the one where Erik is still a princess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La couleur des jours heureux

**Author's Note:**

> Title from another Gainsbourg/Gall collaboration entitled [Les Sucettes](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkfkkiLm91I).

In the end, it was less overwhelming joy at having found a home and family or hope for a mutant utopia that decided Erik but rather the dangerous combination of his own nagging sense of purposelessness and Charles Xavier’s smile, which hovers constantly between arrogance and a self-deprecation that Erik suspects is almost entirely constructed to make Charles seem less intimidating once you realize he can peel you away as easily as untinning sardines. 

Over the month before they leave for Genosha, Erik learns that, when all’s said and done, he prefers the arrogance, more so when it’s entirely unwarranted––

> Charles is flushed, hectic with it, and on the drunken side of tipsy. He’s grinning at a woman with the particular grin that means he’s found something marvelous. A mutation, then; Charles is curiously democratic in his effusive love for the quirks of the arguably human genome, as though each one were created equal. Erik sips his beer––Belgian, decent, it could be cheaper––and watches as the woman raises an eyebrow, politely flirtatious but not especially inviting, and accepts the vodka tonic he buys her without promise of anything further.
> 
> “I love it when they think I’m boring,” Charles admits, coming back to him, patting him affectionately on the shoulder. Erik narrowly suppresses his usual urge to flinch from unexpected contact, a weakness he is determined to beat out of himself one of these days. “It makes me feel so normal. I think it keeps me in my place.”
> 
> Erik nods because Charles’s capacity for critical self-analysis is similar to that of a particularly narcissistic hermit crab and he has discovered it’s useless to disagree or raise the subject of Charles’s vast and sundry faults; Erik’s eyes are still on the woman, who has gone back to her blonde friend, her thumb resting too long on the friend’s wrist in greeting, and oh, yes, Erik knows how that one goes, in theory if not entirely in practice––not yet. 
> 
> Besides, Erik has killed enough ladies to know that Charles, with his elbow-patched sweaters and his near-obsessive devotion to playing chess in unusual places, doesn’t even begin to qualify.

––than when he’s in the right of it––

> “Smugness doesn’t suit you,” Erik says when Charles saunters into the kitchen, obviously enveloped in a post-coital haze.

> “False,” Charles sings out. He’s practically glowing; it would be disgusting if he didn’t wear it so beautifully. “Smugness is the universal panacea, the great equalizer, turning ugly men handsome and the handsome, ugly. Therefore it suits me perfectly––and would suit you, too, Erik, if only you’d unsuit a little.”
> 
> Erik gives him his most withering glare and returns to his coffee and paper. “I think you do enough of that for the both of us.” 
> 
> “Don’t be bitter, it’s not becoming,” Charles says, and pouts while he fills the kettle at the sink. Erik surreptitiously turns the stove on as soon as he sets the kettle down, so Charles leaps back, blinking sleepy surprise out of his face. “Oh, thanks.” 
> 
> “Sure,” Erik says.
> 
> “You know, I do always enjoy it when you decide to stay the night, despite my––”
> 
> “Preoccupation?” 
> 
> “Just so,” Charles laughs, and comes back to the table clutching a banana. “If nothing else, you certainly ease up the morning routine.”
> 
> “My––pleasure,” says Erik stiffly. He has never seen someone eat a banana so tenderly in his entire life. Frankly, he’s slightly offended on the banana’s behalf: it never asked to be involved in such an insipidly obscene affair. “Where’s Monica?”
> 
> “Meghan, I think,” Charles corrects, and vaguely waves a hand in the direction of the front door. “She left not too long ago. She seemed eager to get out of here once morning light hit and she caught a full view of my face.”
> 
> “Well, your breath is ghastly in the morning,” Erik points out.
> 
> “Too true,” Charles says glumly, and then, “you know, you would be welcome to bring someone back here if you wanted to––”
> 
> “No need,” Erik says. “I can get a hotel room. I’ve had lots of practice with it.”
> 
> “I’m just trying to be hospitable,” Charles argues.
> 
> “That’s a bit more than hospitable, Charles,” Erik says, and then musters his courage, “and I’m not sure you’d approve of my choices, anyway.”
> 
> Charles looks skeptical. “You think I wouldn’t like your taste in women?” 
> 
> “Aye, there’s the rub,” Erik says.
> 
> “I don’t––oh,” Charles says, “I see.” He takes a sip of Erik’s coffee. “Shakespeare at this hour of the morning is entirely uncalled for, don’t you think,” he finishes irritably, and swallows the rest of the banana down.
> 
> “Won’t happen again,” Erik promises, and absolutely does not hide behind his paper.

––which is more often than Erik would readily admit––

> They’re playing chess, although really, when aren’t they playing chess of one kind or another, when Charles sets down his whiskey and reaches forward, deliberately touching the hand Erik is currently using to fiddle with his king.
> 
> “Charles, unhand me, you brute,” says Erik, dry as dust and bones, drawing his fingers back. “I know I’m taking too long, but for once you’ve got me cornered.”
> 
> “Do I?” Charles asks, raising an eyebrow. “I hadn’t realized.”
> 
> Erik gestures at the board. “I’d say I’m well and truly fucked at this point.”
> 
> “Hmm,” Charles says, barely glancing down. He drains his glass and stands up. “Watch your language; there are children in this house, you know.”
> 
> “No there aren’t,” Erik says, shaking his head. “We’re all alone.”
> 
> “There could be,” Charles insists, mulishly, then drops it, for which Erik is rather glad: he doesn’t know where this is heading, but wherever they go he knows he’s not going to want children there to see it. “Come here.”
> 
> “I’m quite comfortable,” Erik protests. “Your study is, you know; very old boys at leisure.”
> 
> “I’m not an old boy,” Charles says, but he comes over to Erik anyway. “I just like leather. It feels nice.”
> 
> “Ever the sensualist,” Erik agrees, at which point Charles throws caution to the wind and sits down on him. “This is illegal,” he feels compelled to point out.
> 
> “Not yet it’s not,” Charles says, then small, weirdly shy: “Would you like it to be?”
> 
> Erik considers. The obvious answer is yes––yes, he would like to do terrible, wonderful, filthy things with Charles, all of them carefully delineated and crossed out by prudes in judges’ robes; yes, he would like to be wrapped up in Charles’s bedsheets and life and, oh, certainly, in him––at which point he is terribly distracted and has forgotten anything but the obvious answer. “I’ve never been one for rule books,” he says.
> 
> Charles laughs, delighted, and captures Erik’s face between his two hands and says, “Teach me, then.”
> 
> “Haven’t you?” Erik asks, surprised. Charles has only brought home women, but––well, look at him.
> 
> “Not enough, and not with you,” Charles says, and the night burns on.

––and so it’s Charles who draws Erik in, the pompous, spoilt, ridiculous whole of him, the way he centers Erik and touches him, the magnetic pull deep in Erik’s gut pointing forever due north.


End file.
